How do I make a clear background?

I am working on a web image, and at the moment the image is finished, only it has a black background. Is there a way I can make it clear so that only the image shows up, wrather than the image and its background? The entire image is 1 layer right now, so the only way I know of to isolate the black is to use the magic wand tool, and after that I have no idea what to do.



This is the image, but the webpage has a grey background and so having that black boardering it really makes it look weird. Any help would be appreciated!

Hmm, your image host has apparently lost your example, but that's OK. Open your image in Photoshop, then double-click the Background layer (if present) and accept the default Layer 0 to promote it to a standard unlocked layer. Now grab the Magic Wand selection tool, make sure Contiguous is checked in the context menu below the menu bar, then click the black background area to select it. Press Delete to delete the black area, which will reveal a gray checkerboard pattern representing the transparent area of the image. Save the image, then select File|Save for Web. Of the choices available in the Save for Web dialog, only two support transparency--GIF and PNG. Choose one of these two, preferably GIF unless you're prepared to use the alphaimageloader hack to get IE to support PNG's alpha channel transparency. Make sure Transparency is checked and save the image. Now when you bring "yourimage.gif" into the Web page the transparent area will indeed be transparent.

thank you!

Hi

I wanted to accomplish the same clear back ground for text...
I followed the instructions but when I import the file to FCP a serieis of t's are displayed against a black background any ideas?